joelfinkle

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You are correct that there is a similar set on Google's Play Store, but at least I can 'un-buy' easily. My current peeve is restoring a device: I have a shiny new tablet, which had a DOA microSD slot. Fixing...

"In a plot-driven novel we usually have a simple progression: from the initial status quo to some source of disruption, then growing tension as the protagonists grapple with whatever's going on, to a climax where the tension is resolved"... unless...

Hmm... I'm thinking that the Fermi Paradox has to figure in here somewhere: All that empty out there, and nobody talking to us... what's keeping them quiet? HPL predates the "I Love Lucy leads to Berzerker invasion" stories by about...

I hate word... but it's been good to me in terms of selling tools to improve it. I deal with pharmaceutical research docs, whose lifetimes span years, multiple editors and thus multiple versions of Word. I've built tools to help...

So glad to hear you're writing adult fiction again -- your nanotech books are among my favorites in hard sf: real characters, novel situations, stuff that opens up the back of my head. A lot of my first exposure to...

I've had something much like that happen printing PDF files to an HP OfficeJet that power-cycling didn't cure: It'd be fine on screen, mind-bending horror on paper. In that case it was probably something not quite right in the PDF...

In the US, there is a similar "Do Not Call" list, which can be ignored by non-profits, and by for-profits with whom you have a prior relationship. The most evil of those who ignore this is the prerecorded "Rachel from...

Language is an interesting one: English is about to be overtaken by Mandarin in number of web pages, but I suspect Mandarin is a long way down the list in terms of audio and video content (yay Youtube!). Arabic as...

Comment Threads

Apps - Version Hell. I have two iPhone 3G, an iPhone 5, an iPad 1, and an Pad Air. But that is not the worst part. The worst part is Apple's decision to sandbox the data files inside with the Apps. This makes a multi-tool docucentric workflow pretty much impossible. And the Application (NOT App!) which is my primary use for all those iThings is Music; not iPod style MP3 playback, rather composition. To those who think the iThings are purely consumption devices, or are into electronic music but don't already know this, take a look at the professional and...

" Nobody wants to carry around three iPads for different work cases: if Apple tried to ram that down their customers' throats they'd risk losing market share." You regularly travel with an iPhone (iOS), an iPad (iOS) and a MacBook Air (OS/X which, as you often tell us, is the basis of iOS). Apple has already persuaded you to carry around three devices, what's even better from their point of view is that they've convinced you to buy three different devices from them. Ka-ching! From an earlier comment: "they need a multicore 64-bit ARM (check) that's able to emulate...

Apple control the horizontal and the vertical as far as what runs on their hardware. There's no reason a new full-fat Apple OS (it might not be called OS/X) capable of running heavy-hitting code on desktop or even server setups needs to be backwards compatible with the current Intel family of laptop/desktop CPUs. For the same reasons Apple had backwards compatibility through the last two architecture transitions - from 68K to PPC and from PPC to x86. To run critical applications from third parties who are tardy about releasing new versions that support the new architecture. Adobe for example. Microsoft...

Apple supported PPC for years after they announced their Think Different switch to Intel chips, indeed they even released new PPC hardware during that time (I can't remember precisely when they stopped releasing OS/X upgrades) for late-model G5-series laptops and desktops. Continuing software support for existing Intel hardware would be more of the same for them if they did decide to shift to ARM for all their new OS/X hardware. Probably not going to happen though. ARM systems are optimised for low-power consumption not speed and software emulation of even a Bay Trail Celeron on ARM, never mind an...

I think you're overlooking something. Apple has their concerns and we have ours and there isn't a heckuva lot of overlap in the Venn diagram. Given that Apple has a walled garden, it's very clear that what their most important issue is the walls, not the garden. It's a common attitude in many businesses. What WE do, so long as it makes US money is important. Managing the ecosystem that supports our success? Well, THEY are not US, so THEY don't matter. The end result of a process like this will, of course, bring about Apple's eventual downfall. But right...